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Everything else about that night had been entirely mundane; it had been their monthly dinner with Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao, followed by drinks afterwards at one of their favourite and most frequented bars, not half a mile from their apartment.
They'd all been heading home, jovial and tipsy, coats slipped over arms and scarves wrapped around necks, making their way to the exit.
If they'd left just a few minutes earlier, mere seconds, even, they'd all have been spared the hellish heartache of it all.
Alas, they did not, so they were not. Are still not.
Wei Wuxian had always been self-sacrificing, had always put himself in harm's way for the sake of protecting others, had always managed to walk away with new scars, bloodied and broken, but smiling, pleased with the outcome — another person saved from inevitable pain and anguish.
So, when Jin Guangyao is accosted by someone from his past, someone drunk and bullish with his brow set into a menacing scowl, Wei Wuxian steps in without a second thought, putting himself between Jin Guangyao and the brute who'd confronted him.
One strike, sudden and altogether unexpected, glanced across Wei Wuxian's cheekbone, had sent him stumbling back, losing his footing and falling to the ground, his head colliding with the polished concrete floor, echoing with the most unimaginable, stomach-turning crack.
That was all it took for their life together to be over, that was all it took to snatch the very heart from Lan Wangji's chest.
After, the night is a blur of blood and blue lights, doctors and nurses, questions and concern.
When he finally wakes, after spending nearly two months in a medically induced coma, Wei Wuxian no longer recognised him, no longer knew of the things they'd done or everything they'd had.
He remembered his family — his brother and sister — his studies, and a handful of the people around him, but not Lan Wangji.
Not having the heart to do so, Lan Wangji didn't tell him they were in love, that they had been for over a decade, that Lan Wangji had thought of no one else but him since the moment he'd laid eyes on him in the dinner hall back when they were just kids.
He didn't tell him that all he'd ever wanted was a life with Wei Wuxian, that he'd been living his dream before this savage severance, before unfettered violence took Wei Wuxian from him.
Months more passed, and still there was no sign of the affection Lan Wangji longed to see again in Wei Wuxian's gaze, no recognition or realisation, and he began to lose hope that Wei Wuxian would ever remember him at all.
He thought maybe he'd seen a flash, once, some sliver of cognisance, but it was gone just as quickly as he'd identified it. A glint of light in the night, a candle snuffed out, a single breath lost to the ether.
Eventually, Lan Wangji had to return to teaching at the university. He stopped visiting the hospital altogether, his heart bleeding with the need to pull Wei Wuxian into his arms, and with the knowledge that such a thing would be wholly unwanted.
Lan Xichen tells him that Wei Wuxian will leave, needing to start fresh, needing a new life of his own — not the one he's feeling transplanted into since the assault, since the amnesia.
When he goes, Lan Wangji can't help but follow, taking a job at the university where Wei Wuxian has decided to finally study for his PhD — something he'd always talked about but never committed to. Not until after their life was irrevocably changed, not until after Lan Wangji.
Now, Lan Wangji watches on in secret, as Wei Wuxian chats away to Wen Qing, one of the other research students he's become close to. He animatedly describes to her his new theory, something his genius mind had no doubt discovered whilst experimenting in the lab or reading in the library.
As he talks, Wei Wuxian deftly makes a coffee, brewing the espresso from the noisy machine that sits in the kitchenette of the lounge of the university building, the one that's so vociferous that it steals his voice, forcing him to speak louder over the drone of it.
Eyes feeling too wet for the public setting he finds himself in, Lan Wangji blinks back against the memory of Wei Wuxian doing exactly this, on a Sunday morning in their apartment: a robe loosely tied at his slim waist, revealing a pale slip of the skin at his chest, as he clattered about in the kitchen, closing a draw with his hip and grinning at Lan Wangji, who perched on a stool, seated at the breakfast bar to watch him in devoted awe.
Some days it feels as if Lan Wangji is the only thing Wei Wuxian has forgotten, the only face he still couldn't recognise. Some days he wants to grab him and beg him to see him. Some days he thinks of running and never looking back but, despite his desperation, he knows he doesn't have the strength for that.
If this were a fantasy novel, Lan Wangji would follow him forever, easily and without complaint. Across time, across the globe, loving Wei Wuxian in every iteration; his soul always beautiful, his brain indescribably different and yet still the same.
But this was real life, and this was its own special torture: knowing him, knowing his beauty, knowing his body, but Wei Wuxian barely knowing him at all.
All he can do now is cling to his dwindling hope, that one day soon he'll remember, and he'll love Lan Wangji once more.